


The Lightest Minds Always Fade In the Afterlight

by PatchworkDreams



Category: The Darkest Minds (2018), The Darkest Minds Series - Alexandra Bracken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, F/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-18 09:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17578487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatchworkDreams/pseuds/PatchworkDreams
Summary: Nora Blanchard was an Indigo. With almost no memory of her past except for falling time and time again through almost everything she touches, her life in Thurmond was a blur of eating, sleeping working  and falling through her fractured memories. However, when she is woken by a Green who is having memories of a strange girl called Ruby Daly she finds herself wanting answers…*The world of The Darkest Minds but with two extra colours. Indigos are around the same level as the Blues and Whites are only seen as a myth that can age all of the children/babies with powers to get rid of them.*





	1. Falling - Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rangerstar06](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rangerstar06/gifts).



In my dreams I was crashing. I could feel the blood in my head, drumming like a pulse as I hit the ground. Feel the shock on my tongue and pain on my lips - the cold sting. I could never remember where I was falling from, only the cold hard relief and then the searing reality when I awoke on familiar suffocating sheets. They may as well have been spikes as my post dream delirium was replaced with my usual one. It was always the same dream; in my nightmares I was falling.

Not quite there, I never was. Just enough to stay in my prison. Just enough to stay in Thurmond. 

"Nora…" 

It was still dark and a slurred but aggravated voice hummed out from the bunk beneath me. Unlike me, Cara had the privilege of being able to sleep longer than three hours at night and she definitely took advantage of it. She didn't feel things like I did, constantly falling in and out of reality. We were both Indigos but she may as well not have been. The fuzzy orange ball of fluff on her head was scarcely ever seen except under the covers in our cabins, and when we were working in the gardens she vehemently denied it. She was one of the ones in denial, like almost all of us when we first came but she never seemed to let it go. The rumours in our cabin spoke of her being abandoned by her parents or bringing down buildings but of course none of us had the ability to do so. Us Indidgos.

Us Indigos with the ability to disrupt atoms. To vibrate them, shake them apart enough to let solid objects pass through them. One of the freak kids along with the safe Greens and Blues and the dangerous Reds, Oranges and Yellows. I've never tested this theory, we weren't allowed to use our "powers" in our cabins and those who did were dragged away by the PSFs and never came back. Others have, before they came to Thurmond but doing so now was to be discussed in hushed tones at rare moments. After the IAAN disease wiped out their peers and before they were snatched or kicked from their homes in fear, they were imprisoned here. I never even had a "before".

"Nora…Nora, you're doing it…!" Cara repeated, her voice loud and shrill as a whistle.

The pleasant sound of groaning teenage girls rang around the room. I hadn't even realized, while deep in thought, that my arm was no longer clutching my head. It had slipped straight through the sheets, down the hard metal rungs and through the bed.

Cara's bug-like eyes peered up in fear as everyone around us began to stir. 

"PSFs!"

"Garden…"

"Come on, Nora!"

"Not again, Cara…"

Complaints and expletives stuck to the walls like grime as I attempted to pull out my arm in a frenzied panic. It may as well have been white noise how it filled my ears and with one final tug and a yank on my leg, I was falling. With my vision blurred with red I was falling…


	2. Crashing - Chapter 1

"The fear of doctors is called iatrophobia, did you know that?"

The room I awoke in was small, the dirty white of the walls illuminated by a dim lamp somewhere beside me. The bed I was lying on - if you could call it that - was little more than a metal trolley. It was cool to the touch but did nothing to ease the fire that my body was engulfed in. Where was I? The walls seemed to slowly close in as I attempted to crane my head but it felt as heavy as stone.

"Now now, rest. You've been very troublesome Indigo, I wouldn't want to sedate you again..."

A gloved hand circled my wrist, the slightest touch sending a jolt of pain up my right arn. I tried to yelp, ask for a name, plead to know what had happened to me but my throat simply elicited a feeble croak. The voice above me was unfamiliar, a sweet female voice that seemed to curl at the edges and hum with energy. The kind of voice you would expect from a nurse, blonde with rosy cheeks perhaps. Then it hit me, suddenly. When was the last time I had spoken?

"Did you have fun?" I was yanked upright abruptly and the heat that had engulfed before was a pinprick  
in comparison to the pain that seemed to crash over me in excruciating waves. "You've had your little nap, playtime is over."

The woman was talking in riddles, surely? As my eyes focused, I noticed that the room was just as bare as it looked when I was lying down. The only other thing was a wonky-legged wooden desk with a few glass vials on them - and of course, the "doctor" in front of me. She was exactly what I imagined but brighter, the picture of health. Shiny blonde curls bounced around her face as she tightened her grip on me and her face was smooth unlike the hard, lined faces of the PSFs. She sat in a small plastic chair, her vacant arm sat neatly in her lap. In any other circumstance her pink rimmed smile may have been comforting but as she gave my wrist another jerk, the only emotion I could muster in the midst of my pain was distrust.

"You gave everyone quite the scare with your little stunt there, Indigo. You see, there weren't any doctors on hand when you came in." Her sing-song voice didn't waver as she finally let go of my wrist and lifted a Styrofoam cup to my chapped lips. "My first day on duty and I get a broken arm, can you believe!"

I finally remembered what had happened. The sickening crack as I fell, my arm stuck in the frame of my bed. Worried chatter, Cara's fiery curls hovering above me. Then I had been taken to the infirmary for a few days. That was all. Despite everything, my shoulders slumped with relief. A broken arm was an inconvenience but not dangerous. Being injured wasn't frequent among us and those inflicted with illness usually blundered through well enough. I was alive. Safe. 

Safe with a woman grinning as she tugged mercilessly on my unbandaged, broken arm.

"Say something pretty, Indigo."

"…What?"

The only word I could muster tasted sour on my tongue as she withdrew the cup.

"Say something pretty," She hums. "Then you're free to go."

I tried to make sense of what was happening. I was alone in a room with a doctor, nothing too out of the ordinary. Surely? She must have been testing my arm and besides, being harsh was Thurmond's policy. I must have been transferred from the infirmary to this room for questioning. She was testing me for using my abilities. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

"I don't…"

But then again, doctors don't wear silk gloves and being sedated doesn't set you alight. A broken arm wouldn't stop me from being forced to work - and I didn't exist without my mind always falling. Time to play along. It beat me why she wanted me to say something "pretty" after everything but it also came to my attention that my mind was clear for the first time in years. I wanted answers.

"In my dreams…I'm crashing. In my nightmares I'm falling, I'm in a daze." I croaked quietly, swaying a little in my lightheadedness. "I'm falling, all the time."

She leaned into me, smothering me in the overpowering scent of something sweet, and pressed a folded square of paper into my sleeve. The movement was swift and I almost didn't feel the paper as it nestled into the crook of my wrist.

"Well consider this a dream, Indigo. You've crashed. Just remember, when you hit rock bottom, the only way to go is up." 

Something sharp was pressed into my arm and before I could protest, my vision was already swimming. Her sudden brusque tone seemed to cut into me as I slipped away.

"Iatrophobia darling, remember the word. Now hush, it's naptime…"

The next few days pass in a blur. The absurdity of what had happened was enough for me to disregard the whole situation as a dream and it turned out my arm wasn't broken after all, just sprained. Back to my daily routine, people asked questions but were quickly silenced and after a while I was ignored once again. The little square of paper had disappeared along with any indication that the woman had existed in the first place. Things were back to normal and I was falling again.

In fact, the only thing out of the ordinary that occurred had nothing to do with me. Gossip was hard to spread but definitely not uncommon among us. However, this time it was flying among the PSFs. They hardly spoke except to belittle us or utter the occasional swear word but as I tugged at a particularly troublesome weed in the fields, two of then were muttering to each other. Red Hair and Frog Lips I liked to call them.

"Orange they say, escaped with that blonde woman. Can you believe it?" The red haired one whistled, holding her rifle absent mindedly at her side. I noticed her fiddle with the trigger as she spoke.  
"Damn parasites running of with one of the staff, who knows what the rest of 'em will do?"

"Can't be, wiped them out remember? Anyway, Connor was always a bit…off." The other whispered, glancing around nervously. He held his gun a little higher and glared in my direction when I made the mistake of looking too intently. 

"Exactly! How are we supposed to trust everyone else, especially with the-"

Whatever he was about to say was cut of by a cry behind me. Another PSF - Rabbit Teeth - was standing above Cara with his gun buried into her bright tufts of hair. I didn't even have enough time to register the strangeness of the conversation before everyone in the field, including me, went silent. The air was thick and heavy and didn't lift until the PSF switched the gun around, and hit her about the head with the butt of his rifle. She swayed on to her feet and no one moved until she was dragged away and the rest of the dazed looking PSFs barked at us to get back to work. She wasn't seen again until we were back in our cabins and she stumbled in wordlessly with her fingers bound together with some sort of wire and her previously bouncy hair buzzed short. Even in the dark, the limp in her walk was visible. No one said a word and neither did she.

Later on in the night, I burrowed further into my bed, trying to arrange my arm in a comfortable position. It would bite back at me in the morning but the dull pain of it had woken me. I sat up, rubbing my eyelids and trying to adjust my eyes to the darkness. There was a short but built figure hobbling towards me, most likely Cara on one of her sleepwalking escapades. I sat up sleepily, trying to think of what to say when I woke her. How do you apologise to someone for something like that? Was it even my fault? Then I realised.

The person in front of me didn't have her signature red hair or permanently furrowed brows. She had short blonde hair and a square of paper in her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, posting will be irregular but chapters will be of a similar to or a longer length than this one. Thanks for reading and comments are appreciated!


	3. Scarlet - Chapter 2

Her number was 8765. Tangled blonde hair framed her face and dark circles sunk beneath her eyes, giving them a protruding and awake look. The skin around them were pink and gummy and made her fierce-looking dark eyes look black in contrast. I hit my head on the wall behind me as I jerked back. I'd never seen her before in out cabins and colours were never allowed to mix - could she be the girl the PSFs were talking about?

She looked around hurriedly before shoving the slip of paper into my hand and hauling me upwards by the wrist.

"Get up!" She hissed, feeling for the ladder with her foot. As she spoke, I noticed metal nubs attached to her teeth. Crooked braces but without the wires and as if they had been torn out with haste.

"Who the-"

Once again, my protests were cut off as she tugged me down the ladder. I didn't have enough time to ask her why she had the slip of paper and something tells me she wouldn't answer if I did. I heared Cara's breath hitch as I land beside her.

I had enough sense to stay quiet as he put her finger over her lips and pulled me against her but a million thoughts rushed through my head, screaming at me to do something other then stumble away with some girl I didn't know in the middle of the night. I could hear the faint buzzing of the cameras around us and knew that the PSFs would be directly outside the door; was this a trap for her to lead me to them? She could be a red, an orange and I was staying quiet as she…paused. 

And then pushed me through the wall.

I used to love hearing about the other's lives before Thurmond. Every little snippet, every detail I would relish in. About gardens full of flowers instead of weeds, about schools and the smell of paper and ink instead of sweat and blood. Back when I still clung to the hope that I would be out one day; than one day I would find out about my past. That one day I could live in those inklings of the past, stay in those memories instead of having them washed out by White Noise every time they were spoken of.

My favourite one was always the ocean. I'd seen water of course but the small trickles of it we got while washing could hardly amount to the stretch of it. I was told of a whole expanse and every detail of how the sun kissed its waves and the weightless bliss of floating it stuck with me in countless dreams.

As I slipped through that wall, it was those euphoric nights all over again. Unlike my usual "falling", I was gliding through the air - or whatever it was - like I weighed nothing at all. Like my hands and limbs had become part of the foundations and there was no resistance, just cushioning as I slid my way through.

And then I crashed.

I tasted blood as I fell to the ground and bit into my tongue - hard. I was so focused on that feeling that I hadn't realised I had fallen flat on my back. The Control Tower loomed above me, seeming to cut into the dark night sky and ooze an aura of menace that added some urgency to the situation at hand. I expected a PSF to run around the corner or a girl from my cabin to utter a shout but the night was as silent as was still.

The girl put her hands to together as if uttering some kind of prayer before brushing herself off slowly and jerking me upright with my sprained arm.

"Cate…Argh," She whispered, tucking some sort of device into her back pocket and facing away from me.

"Where- who are you?" I managed, slapping her arm away from me and brushing myself off.

"Sa-" 

Sarah? Sam? I never found out. She starts as if about to say something more but was cut off by a loud shout. The PSFs from earlier dove towards us, nostrils flared and rifle at hand. The girl froze and for the first time I noticed that the PSF wasn't the only one armed. I could already hear the warning.

Any move you make will be taken as an attempt at escape and you will be warned and punished accordingly. With a bullet to the head.

I recognized them almost almost immediately as the one who almost shot Cara. Their face had been covered before but I remebered the dark coarse hair and the hard furrow of his brow as he spat next to her face. I remembered the shocking scarlet against her pale skin. Almost immediately, a hot white anger bubbled inside if me, squashing down the fear I had felt before. 

"Stop!" The PSF barked, almost frothing at the mouth. "Any move-"

I focused my energy on his hand clutching the rifle, imagining it slipping through his hand as if it were water. A strange weightlessness filled me, a numb feeling like cool water washing over feverish skin and I don't hear what the girl says in return.

The rifle lodged itself into his arm in an almost comical angle, causing him to howl in pain. My blue shirt clung to me with sweat and as I turn towards the gate, I caught a glimpse of his feet sinking into the ground. There were shouts finally, more PSFs running around the corner. Guns.

I ran, every part of my feeling heavy; my heart and limbs a dull weight and my shoes caked with mud. I didn't feel when I passed through the gate at last, or feel the PSFs bullets passing through me. I didn't look back to see the girl gone. I didn't look back to see blood staining the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late post, I might be discontinuing this series for a while as I am trying to work on something original. Thanks for reading!


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